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Various thoughts on a variety of topics.

Various Thoughts

Various thoughts on a variety of topics.

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  • Category Archives 2019 – Autumn
  • Anime Related » 2019 - Autumn
  • VINLAND SAGA & Kimetsu no Yaiba

    Posted on February 11, 2021 1:45 pm by Offkorn 7 Comments

    The problem (well, one of the problems) with Vinland Saga is that the protagonist is pretty bad: He starts out bad, becomes merely tolerable, and then ends bad. The show seems to be aware of this and as result shows him as infrequently as possible… which is of course another problem. The best character by far ends up being the protagonist’s sister, and she only appears in like 3 episodes. All the rest feel out of place in one way or another; Askeladd ripped from a Roman epic, Ragnar from an English play, Thorkell from One Piece, Canute from Berserk. None of them feel like they should coexist in the same creation.

    Also based on a manga series, Kimetsu no Yaiba in contrast actually comes across as a self-contained work. The problems here mostly stem from the worldbuilding being poorly thought out, the plot developments being boilerplate battle shounen, and Nezuko’s identity consisting of little more than being brainwashed luggage. Pretty much the only part of it I really enjoyed was the (over)reaction humor since most of the action scenes are polluted by overly obnoxious graphic effects.

    Continue reading → Post ID 8984

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2019 - Summer Anime Related and tagged Action Amazon Prime Battle Shounen Comic Adaptation Comic Relief Drama Finished History Hulu Incomplete Source Netflix Partial Adaptation Series Televised Urban Fantasy
  • ØBSOLETE & PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA SIDE STORY – Magia✧Record: Mahou Shoujo Madoka ☆ Magica Gaiden

    Posted on February 11, 2021 3:27 am by Offkorn Comment

    Obsolete is a web series exploring the idea of what would happen to the current western-centric technological hegemony if aliens showed up one day and offered a cheap, powerful machine that could be used for both manual labor and combat to anyone willing to pay their price. As the title suggests, it would become obsolete. While there is a simmering conspiracy plotline lurking around in the background that links the various episodes together, it would probably be best to approach this as more of an episodic ‘what if’ kind of series with a military theme.

    In Magia Record‘s case, it would probably be best to treat it as a stand-alone sidestory rather than as a technical sequel to Hangyaku no Monogatari. It nails the atmosphere and visual style… but stumbles pretty badly at the ‘making you care about its characters’ bit.

    Oh, and if you decide to watch a fansubbed version, make sure to avoid any release that uses YameteTomete’s subs. Arbitrarily changing “Tamaki” to “Iroha” is just flat-out unacceptable. Gods only know what other bizarre alterations they made.

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2020 - Autumn 2020 - Winter Anime Related and tagged Action Anime Original Comic Relief Crunchyroll Drama Dropped Finished Game Adaptation Magical Girl Science Fiction Series Televised Urban Fantasy
  • Null Peta & Space Battleship YAMATO – STAR BLAZERS 2202: Ai no Senshi-tachi

    Posted on February 9, 2021 12:22 am by Offkorn 1 Comment

    A short, 5-min episode series that presents itself as a comedy should probably avoid trying to instill any kind of moral values. Null Peta disagrees. Here is a show that attempts to mine comedy from not only having to put up with a overbearing, naggy older sister… but actively wanting to subsume your life to her desires even if it kills you. Especially if it kills you. It’s infuriating on every level, particularly when it tries for drama/pathos near the end.

    As a follow-up to Yamato 2199, Ai no Senshi-tachi is a pretty much complete disappointment. It has all the negatives of a Yamato work (idiotic character behavior, random plot developments, space mysticism, toxic nationalism/hero worship, etc.) without any of the surprisingly engaging combat encounters 2199 pulled off. All of the battles here seem to both start and end in arbitrary manners with inconsistent power levels and destructive potential. They come across like empty setpieces.

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    This entry was posted in 2017 - Autumn 2017 - Spring 2017 - Winter 2018 - Autumn 2018 - Spring 2018 - Winter 2019 - Autumn 2019 - Winter Anime Related and tagged Action Comedy Crunchyroll Drama Finished Funimation Mixed Media Project Movie Novel Adaptation Partial Adaptation Romance Science Fiction Series Short Anime Televised
  • Rifle is Beautiful & Yahari Ore no Seishun Lovecome wa Machigatteiru.: Kan

    Posted on November 11, 2020 12:12 pm by Offkorn 1 Comment

    Rifle is Beautiful starts out as a pretty standard schoolgirl club comedy. Then about a third of the way through it starts to introduce serious sports elements, turning into a full-blown sports series in the concluding third… resulting in a particularly uneven showing despite the comedy style remaining intact throughout. While I have to give it credit for not artificially dragging things out as those series tend to do (usually with innumerable training episodes), the sport it decided to focus on (beam rifle target shooting, a variation on air rifle shooting) being actively sedentary does not work in its favor.

    OreGairu‘s final season picks up immediately from where the previous one left off. So it would be a good idea to (re)watch the 13th episode of that before starting this. The character interactions are the highlight as always, but there’s a bit of an awkwardness overlord issue and the primary source of drama comes across as a hamfisted plot device. It is, however, nowhere near as bad as what the Saekano movie pulled; only ending up a minor speed bump in an otherwise enjoyable series conclusion.

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2020 - Summer Anime Related and tagged Comedy Comic Adaptation Dramatic Support Finished LN Adaptation OreGairu Partial Adaptation Romance School Life Series Sports Televised
  • Sundry Anime Movies

    Posted on October 11, 2020 3:19 am by Offkorn 1 Comment
      Gekijouban: FAIRY TAIL – DRAGON CRY
      The improved animation (compared to the parent series) is offset by the worse character artwork and massive pacing hit watching it where it supposedly takes place (post-episode 285) causes. Content-wise it’s effectively a generic battle shounen filler movie.
      Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Fine
      The franchise‘s conclusion begins by almost entirely sidelining the harem aspects to focus on Megumi and how her comments regarding the game mirror her real-life relationship with Aki… only to have the entire thing derailed by a completely unrelated dramatic development about a third of the way through which inexplicably reintroduces the harem elements. They had a natural ending right there only to go and water down and delay it via contrived drama. Why?
      Goblin Slayer -Goblin’s crowN-
      It starts out with a 25-minute recap of the first season (focusing on the violence and rape; which is an odd choice considering the initial reaction to that season was mostly split between ‘the first episode is nothing like the rest of the series’ and ‘the series is nothing but rape’). Such baffling production decisions. As for the new content, the quality level ends up slightly worse the prequel… assuming you go in expecting a double-length TV episode rather than a movie. If you go in actually expecting a movie it will probably end up mostly disappointing.
      HUMAN LOST
      While inspired by No Longer Human and including some of its major plot points, this movie changes far too much to be considered an adaptation (so best to just forget about that if you haven’t already). It’s an action-drama now and a gorgeous work of desolation and futility… though I feel the giant monster and final fight in the ‘void’ were overkill.
      BURN ✠HE WITCH
      Taking place in the same universe as Bleach, being set in a completely different location (one with more of a Harry Potter vibe to it), this movie focuses entirely on the franchise’s magic system rather than item-based or physical combat. It starts off well enough with crisp artwork, fluid combat animation, and mostly decent characters. The problem is with one particular character: Balgo. He’s awful and has no reason to exist beyond being awful and causing some of the most contrived plot developments I’ve recently had the misfortune of being exposed to.
      Sora no Aosa o Shiru Hito yo
      While the movie works decently enough as a music-themed relationship drama for about 3/4ths of its runtime (leavened by ample comic relief), the vaguely Anohana-like supernatural elements don’t really add anything. It doesn’t have much of an ending either, with events being resolved in the most arbitrary manner possible and an epilogue taking the form of still images embedded in the credit roll.

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    This entry was posted in 2017 - Spring 2019 - Autumn 2020 - Autumn 2020 - Winter Anime Related and tagged Action Anime Original Battle Shounen Comedy Comic Adaptation Comic Relief Crunchyroll Drama Fairy Tail Fantasy Funimation Goblin Slayer Harem Incomplete Source LN Adaptation Movie Music Romance Saekano Science Fiction Urban Fantasy
  • NO GUNS LIFE & Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T.

    Posted on October 7, 2020 2:08 pm by Offkorn Comment

    The action-drama No Guns Life has a visual similarity to Zetman, an atmospheric similarly to detective noir, and a small ill-fitting streak of often ecchi-related comic relief. Personally I just strongly disliked Tetsurou and Olivier’s character design and wasn’t interested enough in the plot developments to stick with it beyond the first half.

    Yet another entry in the Index franchise, Railgun T takes place sometime between the Accelerator spinoff and Index III. It’s strange. Ideally you would want consistent visual quality, right? Yet here the end result comes off as unnaturally natural. Like, there are fully drawn people walking around with detailed background destruction down to individual glass shards… the world actually looks real.

    And that’s the problem: Anime, in my opinion, shouldn’t look real. It’s disconcerting. Almost as disconcerting as the large amount of fanservice (e.g. there’s an entire episode dedicated to two characters’ quest to enlarge their bust size).

    Oh yeah, I also watched some of Eizouken ni wa Te o Dasu na! recently; if you really like the mechanics of making Anime (and don’t mind children’s drawings) give it a shot. I’m not all that fond of creator mythmaking myself and didn’t like the character design much either.

    Continue reading → Post ID 8984

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2020 - Spring 2020 - Summer 2020 - Winter Anime Related and tagged Action Comedy Comic Adaptation Comic Relief Drama Dramatic Support Dropped Ecchi Finished Funimation Incomplete Source School Life Science Fiction Series Televised Toaru
  • Sword Art Online: Alicization & War of Underworld

    Posted on September 23, 2020 5:37 am by Offkorn 1 Comment

    There are a great many problems with the three part sequel to the SAO Ordinal Scale movie.

    The central one is the ill-conceived fusion of the sci-fi modern day plotline and Underworld’s essentially stand-alone fantasy plotline. The two never had any reason to mix. Assassin’s Creed does something similar, and the criticisms about the way that franchise mixes its past/present settings hold doubly true here since Underworld is effectively self-contained as opposed to being a reflection. The author could have easily wrote Alice and Eugeo’s story as its own thing with no association whatsoever to Kirito’s group and ended up with a far more consistent and immersive product.

    Pretty much all of the remaining issues can be tied back to Kirito’s involvement with the story; spontaneous power-ups, random cameo appearances, last minute saves, questionable character motivation, harem elements, and bizarre plot twists all. Really, the only flaw that can truly be called its own is the re-occurring theme of using psychosexual megalomaniacs as main villains.

    Vaguely related to all of that in a ‘you can probably watch this if you’re a fan of the genre’ sense are the series Runway de Warrette and Princess Connect! ReDive. The first of which is a fashion industry-focused Cinderella story overloaded with assholes who magically become nice while the latter is a conventional fantasy action-comedy whose protagonist has the personality of a particularly dull puppy.

    Continue reading → Post ID 8984

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    This entry was posted in 2018 - Autumn 2019 - Autumn 2019 - Winter 2020 - Summer Anime Related and tagged Action Battle Shounen Comic Relief Crunchyroll Drama Fantasy Finished Hulu LN Adaptation Romance SAO Science Fiction Series Televised Virtual World
  • Dorohedoro & Kabukichou Sherlock

    Posted on September 3, 2020 8:44 am by Offkorn 1 Comment

    The gory CGI action-comedy Dorohedoro appears to have been the inspiration behind Kekkai Sensen, as they have a remarkable number of similarities between them in terms of atmosphere and character behavior. So I’m not really sure why I ended up so ambivalent about it. There are the obvious problems of course, such as the brain-damaged ecchi child, Hakata Ramen-esque baseball episode, cringey late-series mind-control developments, and both Nikaidou and Noi bearing a curious resemblance to Goku… but in the end I think it may have just been that the style of CGI animation they used disagreed with me.

    Kabukichou Sherlock is another comedy series which would have been better off named ‘Rakugo Sherlock‘. I hate rakugo. While I’ll grant that making Sherlock a rakugo addict rather than a drug addict goes a long way toward making him even more eccentric, I’m not sure there are all that many people out there who can stand that level of eccentricity. Especially when almost every other character in the series besides Watson is neurotic in some manner. And that’s ultimately all this series has going for it; neurosis. If you don’t enjoy laughing at outcasts there won’t really be anything for you here.

    If you happen to be in the mood for a cute parenting-themed traveling show however, you can instead check out Somali to Mori no Kamisama without fear of it developing romantic elements.

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2020 - Winter Anime Related and tagged Action Anime Original Comedy Comic Adaptation Dramatic Support Dropped Finished Funimation Incomplete Source Mystery Netflix Series Televised Urban Fantasy
  • Kanata no Astra: ASTRA LOST IN SPACE & WATASHI, NOURYOKU wa HEIKINCHI dette Itta yo ne!

    Posted on September 2, 2020 2:59 pm by Offkorn Comment

    A bit of a rarity these days, Kanata no Astra happens to be a completed adaptation of a completed work. And though not quite a mixed genre series (the comedy is absolutely the main focus) it treats its dramatic aspects with all due seriousness without cutting any corners or using any cheap tricks. Really the only thing negative I can say about it is that there’s one plot twist too many; the overarching reasoning behind why they found a ship where they did ends up on just the wrong side of unbelievable… particularly when combined with the habitability of the various planets they visit.

    The pseudo-gag comedy Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! is unfortunately far less well structured. It combines 4th-wall breaking parody, 4th-wall breaking exposition, reaction humor, ecchi humor, serious drama, not-so-serious drama, action of both the sincere and not-so-sincere variety, and (at the very end) battle shounen elements. It is, simply put, a mess. They needed to either drop the dramatic/sincere bits or drop the nanomachine-related commentary and 4th-wall breaks, as the two do not mix well at all. Hell, even just sticking to one or two varieties of comedy might have resulted in something less scattershot.

    Continue reading → Post ID 8984

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2019 - Summer Anime Related and tagged Action Comedy Comic Adaptation Crunchyroll Dramatic Support Fantasy Finished Funimation Mixed Media Project Parody Science Fiction Series Televised
  • Assorted Non-Comedy Anime

    Posted on August 27, 2020 9:43 am by Offkorn Comment

    Fairy gone: I can’t think of a single good reason to keep watching this series beyond the pilot episode; the characters are awful and the fairies are Persona ripoffs.

    Katsute KAMI Datta KEMONO-tachi e: This show does not make a good first impression. While it amazingly enough manages to overcome that handicap by focusing on the corruption of various characters’ personal desires, by the halfway point that effort turns out to be for naught when it goes all-in on the battle shounen angle. The (thankfully rare) bits of comedy are also uniformly terrible.

    Assassins Pride: Questionable beginning aside, this briefly fooled me into thinking it was going to be a fairly standard ‘academy tournament’ or ‘rise of the underdog’ type of story… only to turn into a discordant mess of unrelated ideas instead.

    Granbelm: A magical mecha battle royale series with Madoka-like characters and an early streak of comic relief centered on the protagonist’s airhead façade. The problem is that it starts when the battle has been raging for a year, so instead of exciting early eliminations you have an extended see-sawing stalemate that wears out its welcome before the series is even half over and big dramatic moments that come across as arbitrary. What’s really annoying though is that episodes 10 & 11 (which have an almost completely different theme) are pretty damn good.

    How disappointing. An almost complete wash, I’m wondering if I should just stick to comedies.

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2019 - Spring 2019 - Summer Anime Related and tagged Action Anime Original Battle Shounen Comic Adaptation Comic Relief Crunchyroll Drama Dropped Fantasy Finished Funimation HiDive Incomplete Source LN Adaptation Paranormal Romance Series Televised Urban Fantasy

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